Building blocks for a clinical imaging informatics environment Marc D Kohli, MD1 Paul G. Nagy, PhD2 Max Warnock2 Mark Daly, BS2 Christopher Toland2 Chris Meenan, BS2 1 – Department of Radiology, Indiana University School of 550 University Blvd Indianapolis, IN 46202 2 - From the Department of Diagnostic Radiology and Nuclear Medicine, University of Maryland School of Medicine, 22 S. Greene St., Baltimore, MD. Address correspondence to P.G.N. (
[email protected]). Phone: (410) 328-6301 Fax: (410) 328-0641 Index Terms: software reuse, HL7, DICOM, Mirth, open-source, imaging informatics, informatics Abstract Over the past 10 years, imaging informatics has been driven by the widespread adoption of radiology information and picture archiving and communication and speech recognition systems. These three tools are intuitive to most radiologists as they replicate familiar paper and film workflow. So what is next? The next generation of applications will be built with moving parts that work together to satisfy advanced use cases without replicating databases and without requiring fragile, intense synchronization from clinical systems. We provide blueprints for addressing common clinical, educational, and research related problems. This paper is the result of identifying common components in the construction of over two dozen clinical informatics projects developed at the University of Maryland Radiology Informatics Research Laboratory. The systems outlined are intended as a strong foundation rather than an exhaustive list of possible extensions. Background Software reuse is a philosophy that makes stored information more accessible and flexible, facilitating creation of novel uses of existing data. Before examining software reuse within healthcare, we present online-travel an example of the higher-level integration that we strive toward.